Ever increasing numbers of wireless devices are being introduced and sold. As such, the radio frequency (RF) spectrum available for these wireless devices to communicate continues to get more and more crowded. More efficient use of the RF spectrum, and sharing under-utilized RF spectrum are very important to meet the growing number of wireless devices. One portion of the RF spectrum that is under-utilized is the portion reserved for television (TV) broadcasting. Governmental regulators divided the TV portion (and/or other portions) into a plurality of channels. However, for any given geographic region many of the channels are not utilized for TV or radio broadcasting.
Unused frequencies of the reserved TV portion of the RF spectrum can be referred to as TV white space. It is possible to utilize these TV white spaces for other uses, however, their use tends to be tightly regulated by governmental institutions (such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States).
These governmental institutions are establishing databases that map channel or frequency utilization to geographic location. Stated another way, for a given location, the database can indicate a sub-set of frequencies that are utilized for TV broadcasting and other licensed use (such as wireless microphones in some countries) and/or a different sub-set of frequencies that are TV white spaces. Potentially, the governmental institutions may allow individual TV white space frequencies to be temporarily used for other purposes. However, any access point device (sometimes referred to as a “master”) that wants to temporarily use one or more of these TV white space frequencies has to have the capability to know its own geographic location to within an accuracy acceptable by the regulators and also has to have access to the database via the Internet so that the device's location can be utilized in conjunction with the locations in the database. The device may be able to obtain authorization to utilize individual TV white space frequencies according to specific conditions or constraints. For instance, the constraints may relate to the location of the device, a duration of the authorization, and/or an allowed transmission power. Other available radio frequencies may be handled in a similar manner.